the greater miracle?

The answer to some prayers arrives as wisdom, not a miracle.

Yet wisdom itself is a miracle, if you think about it. I mean, we people can be numbskulls. I say that by experience. By confession, lol.

When I sent the first copies of The Bent Tree Path, Book One: A Secret Trail of Tears to my advance readers (the ones who give feedback before publication), some of them said they’d never have finished the book if it hadn’t been for Lena. Becca, on the other hand, drove them crazy.

“Stop!” “No, don’t do it, Becca!” “How could she do that?”

One stupid mistake after another, our co-protagonist made.

And one secret I’ll fess up to here?

Hold on, I’ll tell you at the end. . .

First, I’ll share with you some of the prayers that, dear as they were to my heart, were never answered. At least not directly. And certainly not as fast as I, if I were God, which I’m not, would have delivered to a poor soul like me. (insert silly face here).

As I share them, please don’t take them lightly, even though the tone of my post is light. These are prayers that meant the world to me. Prayers I labored over for years–decades even. Prayers for things that were good, and for good reasons. Prayers I changed my life-myself-to convince God and myself I was worthy of the answer and prayers I pled for mercy and grace knowing I never really could be worthy no matter how hard I tried.

If you’ve ever done any of these things, please leave a comment.

So I know I’m not alone.

1. I prayed for peace. As a teen in the height of the Vietnam War, the war was on television every day. My oldest brother’s friends, then on to my friends, registered for the draft, and many went. I begged God for peace in our world and asked why. Why can’t our world leaders just get together and figure out a way to be reasonable and good to one another? It went on, and on. My faith in God lessened as that, along with other personal prayers, seemed to land on deaf ears.
2. I prayed for a baby. A child to love, to treasure, to raise as, hopefully, another productive member of society. Maybe even one who would make a good difference in the world. A little brother or sister for the daughter I had when I was a teen, who really wanted a baby brother or sister. I watched as my sisters, friends, and what seemed like every other female in my life, easily conceived not one, but two, sometimes, three kids. Even women who I thought didn’t deserve it because they weren’t such great mothers.
3. When my first husband became sick and disabled and gave up on treatments and retreated into a life with curtains drawn, medicated to the point of no conversations or activities or. . . anything, I prayed for his healing. I prayed and sought and begged and prayed and searched my heart and prayed and prayed and prayed. We had served God in ministry. We had dedicated our lives to wherever His will led. But my husband had given up and I could not change another person by direct action. I also could not get God to change him.
4. Family members, more than one, have had mental health disorders that have crippled their lives. I’ve prayed for them, and coupled the prayers with actions to help as best I can as a trained occupational therapist and recovering child of an addict. Some improved to some degree, but still, so many people with so many health issues, not just in my family, but everywhere.

These are just four of my heartfelt prayers that seemed to go unanswered. In the perspective of time and maturity, I can see how much I learned from enduring hardship and grief and ineffectiveness. I learned the value of not obtaining the perfect life in a perfect world. The increase in compassion, patience, forgiveness, and wisdom. To be fully human and in the process of becoming more like Christ, and to wait more patiently as He works in us all to be more involved in His work on this planet.

So, yeah, wisdom. It arrives as its own form of answered prayer, though not exactly the one we asked for, it is a miracle in and of itself. Who in the world can change a person from the inside out? That is God. and that answered cry of my heart is worth not getting the answer (yet) to any of the more temporal cries.

Am I alone in this? Have you been bogged down, like I was, for years, decades even, despondent with unanswered prayers? Tell me.

Oh, the little secret? Most of Becca in The Bent Tree Path I wrote from my own experience. Yep, me. So. dumb. Yet so full of hope and promise.

Becca turns out okay.

With Love,

Joan